Longbow Lake – Site 2

Closest Access Point: Tim River (Access Point 2)Distance To Access Point: 15-16 KM (4 – 5 hours)Difficulty of Travel From Access Point: Easy to Moderate (Depends on the water levels on the Tim River).Maintenance Level: RegularDate of Visit: July, 2018

This site exists. That’s about all I can say for it. It exists and it is a place that you can sleep for a night if you want to. I just don’t know why you’d want to. It’s small, enclosed and looks like someone just hacked it out of the trees, but then got bored with the job about halfway through. On the plus side, the Thunderbox is brand new and basically unused. So there’s that.

This is it. All of it.

Terrain: The one good thing about being a small site is that there probably isn’t a lot of uneven ground (unless you’re Furrow Lake). The cleared out ground that there is on this site is relatively flat. The ground cover is a mix of dirt and grass. There’s a slight grade up from the water, but no more than an average accessibility ramp.

Canoe Landing: This is actually a pretty decent landing. The underwater approach is sandy and clear of major obstructions. There are a couple of breadbox (does anyone still have a breadbox?) sized rocks at the waterline, but more than enough room to pull the boat up on the sand for loading/unloading.

The canoe landing.

The fire pit. Supposedly.

Fire Pit: The fire pit is where things start to fall apart, literally. It’s basically a haphazard circle of rocks in the middle of the site. You get the feeling that someone blew the break whistle halfway through construction on this pit and the crew never came back to finish it off after their lunch. If you wanted to balance a grill on the walls you’ll first have to find some more rocks to build those walls. There is a giant curved piece of rusty metal on the water side of the pit that looks like it would be a very good windbreak, just be careful not to trip over it; I feel like cutting yourself on that thing would result in you being one appendage lighter than before you started the trip.

Swimmability: The sandy landing and underwater approach makes it sort of swimmable, but the shoreline is kinda weedy and, frankly, swimming here doesn’t look all that appealing.

You could swim here. But do you really want to?

You could put a tent here.

Tent Sites: You could fit a couple of tents here if you wanted to (but, honestly, why would you want to?). While it’s a small site, what usable ground there is is fairly flat. More than two tents would make things pretty cozy though.

Thunderbox!

Thunderbox: The highlight of the site. It’s got that fresh, new thunderbox look and feel. The kind of thing you want to take home and put in your backyard just so your neighbours can come over and appreciate it. It’s also about fifteen steps from the campsite, so you can tell your tripping partners back on the site all about just how great it is while you’re there.

Accessories: Apart from the rusty metal windbreak and something that looks less like a grill than it does a high concept piece of rust based art, nothing. Not even some random logs around the firepit to sit on.

Views: Eastward facing from the canoe landing. This is a fairly enclosed site, so the only view is what you see through the break in the trees coming up from the water. Because the site is so small, you can see the water from pretty much everywhere, but it’s a limited view.

The obstructed view

And the unobstructed view.

Notes: This site really doesn’t win any awards for me. I’d much prefer site 3 across the bay or, if that one was taken, site 1 on the Longbow/Tim portage. That one, at least, has some room to move around on.